The Dark Side of Overnight Success

Most people have a strong desire to be successful. Many times, however, we do not know exactly what success means or how to pursue it. This introduces much of the confusion and frustration we experience in life. This is why, as a business mentor, a major part of my job is to help people figure out who they are, what they want and how to achieve it. This assists them in shaping a clear notion of success and facilitates their pursuit thereof.

After mentoring hundreds of business executives and entrepreneurs, I have realized that one of the most common obstacles in becoming successful is the unconscious wish for overnight success and having it all. Such wishes make people impatient, shortcut-minded and capricious, all of which have devastating effects on performance and judgement. Debunking these myths is key.

About Overnight Success

Most people have a strong desire to be successful. Many times, however, we do not know exactly what success means or how to pursue it. This introduces much of the confusion and frustration we experience in life. This is why, as a business mentor, a major part of my job is to help people figure out who they are, what they want and how to achieve it. This assists them in shaping a clear notion of success and facilitates their pursuit thereof.

After mentoring hundreds of business executives and entrepreneurs, I have realized that one of the most common obstacles in becoming successful is the unconscious wish for overnight success and having it all. Such wishes make people impatient, shortcut-minded and capricious, all of which have devastating effects on performance and judgement. Debunking these myths is key.

1. What most people call overnight success is actually the market suddenly realizing the value of a great product or service that had been kept in obscurity for too long while its creators refused to give up.

2. There is a difference between overnight success and early success. People tend to mistake the success of young entrepreneurs for sudden success. If you are an adult with a spouse, children, a mortgage and a heavy Excel workbook to make sense of it all, you may find counterintuitive, and maybe even unfair, that someone else can become a millionaire at age 19, 21 or 25. However, there is usually a story of hard work, creativity, genius and good opportunities behind such stories. People like Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook , or Justin Bieber, pop music icon, did not become successful overnight. They dedicated years to learning and perfecting their craft, during which they experienced disappointment, reinvention and, finally, success. Yes, they did not endure the decades of trial and error most of us have; yet that does not mean their success was void of effort, disappointment, struggle and the like.

In conclusion, the idea of overnight success is, by all means, a misconception. Planning one’s life around it is plain senseless.

About Having It All

Also, having it all is a very misleading ambition. In this regard, I share the following two lessons with my mentees:

1. It is economically and psychologically impossible to have it all—meaning, it is impossible to have all of the good and none of the bad. For instance, if you had literally all the wealth in the world, you would have to be at war with everyone else to protect it, which would make your success quite a short-lived and heavy burden. Similarly, if you had literally all the happiness in the world and none of the sorrow, you would be unable to relate empathetically to everyone else, which would make your company unbearable and, therefore, make you sad.

2. Based on the foregoing, those who claim to have it all are lying. They are just conceitedly hiding the fact that they do not.

Life is about making choices. When you choose one option, you are also saying no to many others. You can have what you want, but you cannot want it all and have it all. Or, as Peter Senge said, “You can have your cake and eat it too, but not at the same time.” If you really, really have it all, it means that you have had both victory and defeat; celebration and disappointment; abundance and lack; love and heartbreak, and so on—and you have learned to appreciate it all and learn from it. But that is a completely different notion from the popular “I want to have it all.”

10 Success Lessons For Modern Entrepreneurs

Every single day, I get at least one email or social media invite saying success is around the corner if I just sign up for some dubious “business opportunity.” I am impressed, and not in a good way, by how many people are so quickly seduced by such nonsense. What is worse, they end up becoming longtime followers of stupid philosophies and virtual communities that allegedly teach you how to “hack” life.

I find it incredible when I meet people who have been bouncing from one pyramid structure to another, from one online millionaires’ club to another, from one nutritional shake to another, and still think they will soon find the right trick to “hack” life. It breaks my heart.

Here is the golden nugget: The only way to “hack” life is by working hard. If you are a shortcut kind of a person, you will always end up trapped in ethically questionable practices that will lead to failure or shame. If you really want to be successful, you must develop a loving and respectful attitude towards life’s challenges. In this regard, I suggest you take into account the following:

1. Success requires hard work, courage, humility, patience, resilience, talent, teamwork and, yes, hard work again. Any “opportunity” that promises to circumvent any of the latter is most likely a scam.

2. Successful people do business only with other individuals they know well or have been able to vet through various means—doing business with people you have never met in person is most likely a stupid, stupid idea.

3. A sound legal framework is required to protect each business partner and the relationships among them.

4. The perfect work-life balance may be something you deserve, but it can also keep you from realizing your dreams;

5. Videos and pictures of people working out, looking beautiful and driving fancy cars are no evidence of success—always remember it costs less than $500 to look like a million bucks.

6. Getting email invites from strangers to seize fantastic business opportunities are scams;

7. Online millionaires’ clubs are scams;

8. Most profitable businesses still happen offline, and most online profitable businesses depend on offline businesses, so get out there;

9. Overnight success and having it all are myths.

10. Success is forged under fire and happiness—having it all—is the result of understanding, accepting and loving the inevitability of such truth.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever been seduced by the idea of overnight success? Do you think it is possible to have it all? Do you think that overnight success and having it all are ambitions that have become more common in modern times than they were in the past? If so, why?